Not Called You Say?

" 'Not called!' did you say? 'Not heard the call,' I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity; listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. And then look Christ in the face, whose mercy you have professed to obey, and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world."

- William Booth

The Ultimate Good of the Gospel

The ultimate good of the gospel is seeing and savoring the beauty and value of God. God’s wrath and our sin obstruct that vision and that pleasure. You can’t see and savor God as supremely satisfying while you are full of rebellion against Him and He is full of wrath against you. The removal of this wrath and this rebellion is what the gospel is for. The ultimate aim of the gospel is the display of God’s glory and the removal of every obstacle to our seeing it and savoring it as our highest treasure. “Behold Your God!” is the most gracious command and the best gift of the gospel. If we do not see Him and savor Him as our greatest fortune, we have not obeyed or believed the gospel."
-John Piper

A Trip to the Beale Street Blast

The Beale Street Blast is an annual three day drunken street party on the streets of Memphis, Tennessee. My dad has been attending for several years - not to get drunk, but rather to share the gospel with anyone who will listen. Actually, there's several hundred Christian street preachers and families who go there every year to share the gospel with the crowd.
This year, Dad took Jemima, Liz, and Ruth with him.
I'll let Jemima fill in the captions, since I wasn't there...

"You Must Choose Between Sin and the Saviour"...Signs such as these grab the attention of the crowd, and signs with scripture verses defining sin incite serious discussion. Most of the street preachers who attend were once on the other side of things...former Satanists, drunks, drug-addicts, and violent or suicidal...

"Bez" interacts with the crowd, as a young man steps forward to take the "Good" test.
Going through the ten commandments, everyone fails on the first one:
"Thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thy heart..."
Most people admit they have broken every one of the ten.

When asked, "Have you ever taken God's name in vain?" most of the folks on Beale Street say with a laugh and a curse word, "I sure have!" Yet as they admit to breaking God's law, their friends all yell, "He IS a good person!"

We pray that they will remember this as a moment when they were confronted with the holiness of God, and someday humbly ask Him for mercy.

Dad (left) likes talking one on one with people.
He can identify with many of them, being a former atheist, rebel, and drug addict.

Each day before entering the street party, our group knelt at the entrance, asking God for wisdom, protection, and open hearts.

"Tell ye, and bring them near; who hath declared this from ancient time?...Have not I the LORD? And there is no God else beside Me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside Me. Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else."
Isaiah 45: 21-22

Jemima and Liz enjoyed seeing their friend Joanna Craft again.
We met her family a number of years ago when they were traveling through the area, doing street preaching all over the country.

Year in Review, Part 3

My brother,
Abe,
sharing
the gospel
with
whoever
will listen!
(Memphis, TN
Spring '07)









Throughout the spring, various members of our family enjoyed going to the Springfield square with some of the folks from church who go there faithfully every Friday night to talk with anyone who will listen... about God, life, if the Bible is true, social issues of the day, President Bush, drugs, gangs, creation science, homelessness.... Sometime conversations get really interesting!

At the square, you never know who you are going to meet, or what people hanging out for the evening are going to say or want to talk about. But, the goal is to bring their thoughts to what life is really all about, Who made them, and if they are ready to answer to their Maker someday.

When desiring to share the gospel with someone, I often think of the story of the woman at the well in the Bible. Everyone else ignored the Samaritan woman as she went about her daily tasks. After all, she was of low class, messed up... in short, the Jews didn't talk to people like her.
But Jesus stopped.
He didn't hit her over the head with a fire and brimstone sermon. He didn't bring up her five husbands first. Rather, He showed interest and concern for her as a person. He engaged her in conversation. Then He went straight for her heart. He knew that she was lonely, hurting, and empty... and that is exactly were He steered the conversation. Did she want living water, He asked? He aroused her curiosity... Soon she was asking to know more, to know what he thought about her religion's teachings...
And a few minutes later, she was running back to the city to tell the men that she had found the Messiah. "Come see a Man that told me all things that I ever did!"

That's the goal when we share the gospel at the square -- to bring people to realization of their lives before a holy God, and then to point them to Living Water.

Below: It's the tradition to spend a few hours at the Square, and then head over to Braum's for ice cream and "de-briefing" before heading home. Someone always has quite a story about an experience with someone on the street!

First picture: Some of the dads, in the back ground, some of the girls
Second picture: Some of the younger guys, relating the experiences of the night